“Bufi ordered the workers to be sent into the cyanide solution”

Aleksandër Çipa At last month’s Istanbul summit, one of the heads of Western diplomacy said, among other things: “We are no longer on the peninsula of misery, but in this region, which is now multiplying its crops and its open doors.” As proof of this opening, which is not merely diplomatic, all the states of the southern Balkans are now coming together—states that have endured historical tension and contraction between them. Prime Minister Meta is heading to the Hellenic capital on the eve of Christmas, leading an official delegation. Our official diplomacy has usually suffered from what might be called inefficiency in the diplomatic administration. It is no exaggeration to say that in recent years our representative offices in these countries could simply have been called diplomatic boutiques. This is why Albanian diplomacy as a whole has lacked a pragmatic sense of the moment. Nevertheless, Prime Minister Meta has found the right moment to convey to official Athens, amid the natural exchange of Christian greetings, his political message about the future of bilateral relations in the new century. In this context, he can no longer simply ask for the right of emigrants to be treated well, but must call for the procedures for their legalization to be brought to a swift conclusion. This means that the two official sides now have other reasons to move beyond archaic disputes. Some time ago, speaking about relations with neighboring countries and the priorities within them, Prime Minister Meta explicitly stated: Albania is now pursuing a Pact policy. This is why the Greek and Italian press alike are conspicuously lacking the headlines that once expressed open jealousy between the two capitals over questions of priority. A few days ago, the Greek Ambassador in Tirana, Mallias, did not hesitate to publicly respond to the Albanian Deputy Minister for Economic Cooperation, declaring that “the embassy has accurate statistics showing that Greece ranks first in Albania’s exports and imports with other countries.” At the same time, Italian diplomacy has never before seen such a flow of arrivals and departures on the planes and ferries reaching Durrës and Rinas. Indeed, Secretary of State Raineri, who recently arrived in Tirana, made news of the Donors’ Conference—expected to be held in Rome by March next year—the first thing he communicated to the head of Albanian diplomacy and the Executive. In this new diplomatic suitcase being presented to the European diplomatic community as a whole, Albania has the opportunity to leave its past behind without making demands—or, more precisely, to abandon the complex of resentment born of jealousy.

Page 19 Prime Minister Meta, his wife Monika Kryemadhi, and their youngest daughter Bora yesterday at the quintuplets’ home

The producers of the trafficking operation caught by the police are released The State has been exposed today as the main accomplice of the speedboats. What the Albanian government, together with the Italian government, wanted to do has been obstructed by the most rotten part of the State: the courts. Yesterday, the court itself exposed the police in the operation against the speedboat manufacturers. While law enforcers went after the manufacturers of the trafficking vessels, the latter calmly agreed to go to the police station and showed the permits they had obtained from the tax office, following the court’s decision allowing speedboat production. This decision would not be so objectionable if it did not concern the uncontrollable trafficking to Italy, which above all has cost human lives. Thus, the illegal industry that the State claims it wants to fight is now at its peak. page 9

Poison scandal at the Copper Mine in Rubik, Municipality sues two ministers

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